My health recovery is incredibly fast.

There was a slight turmoil in the kingdom, but it was still under control and did not cause much of a stir.

Everything is going smoothly.

After selling the martial arts school, Audrey successfully entered Starry Night Academy and became Anru'er's student.

Although there is a significant age gap between the two, it did not affect their communication.

After observing them quietly a few times and confirming that the two of them hadn't had any minor disagreements, Xia Zuo put Audrey's matter aside and continued to focus on gaining experience.

Eight months have passed in the blink of an eye.

That morning.

An aerial fleet consisting of hundreds of cargo airships departed from the old site of Starry Night City, ostentatiously flying over the provinces of Night South, Rosac, and Sbreil, and finally arrived over Starry Night City amidst the morning dew and the glow of dawn. Under the watchful eyes of the entire city, they docked at the shipyard on the mountain range where Starry Night Academy is located.

A shipyard?

Is there a shipyard next to Xingye Academy?

Everyone clearly remembers that there was no shipyard there.

These U-shaped docks, lined up on the mountainside, appeared out of thin air overnight, like a belt around the mountain's waist.

Now, these docks are filled with towering cargo airships, each about half the size of Starry Night Castle.

A hundred airships of the same size gathered together would be enough to amaze the entire city for a whole year.

From the tower terrace of the Starry Night Castle in Shazo, one can overlook the bustling city, where countless people are rushing around talking to each other, spreading the rumors that Beatrice had orchestrated.

One can imagine how lively the ten-year Starry Night Kingdom will be.

Those with ability and courage can go to the western border to fight monsters, defend the kingdom's territory, earn military merits, and exchange them for better breathing techniques.

Those who are hardworking and farsighted can migrate to the western part of the kingdom and, even without personally going to the front lines, earn a lot of silver coins by striking anvils, blowing on stoves, and moving coal.

If someone is both good-looking and knows how to navigate social situations, oh, that would be fantastic.

The "Beauty" card, when combined with any other card, becomes a killer move, allowing you to reap the riches from the pockets of soldiers, mercenaries, and alchemists.

"I really look forward to the scene of ten thousand people resisting the monster siege." Xia Zuo chuckled, turned his gaze away from the city and headed towards Beatrice's study. It was time to pick up the "delivery".

As Xia Zuo entered the study, Beatrice was just taking several metal boxes out of her alchemy pouch.

“These are auxiliary modules for the tower.” Beatrice pointed to the numbered metal boxes, then to the smaller metal boxes on the desk:

“That was given to you by Christo. She said it contains the Sands of Time. You probably want to comprehend the laws of time and space, right? Every temple mage has tried to comprehend the Sands of Time, but almost all of us have failed, including me. So don’t be discouraged if you haven’t been able to comprehend the laws of time and space; it’s perfectly normal.”

Chapter 13 The Sands of Time

“The Sands of Time?” Xia Zuo looked curiously at the small metal box on Beatrice’s desk.

“After you open this metal box, you will have at most three minutes to comprehend the laws of spacetime.” Beatrice patted the metal box lightly. “After three minutes, the Sands of Time will slip away and disappear without a trace. No matter what you do, you will not be able to keep them.”

"I can only comprehend it for 3 minutes..." Xia Zuo scratched his head. This was something he exchanged for with 5000 million citizen points, the time limit is too short.

“It’s ‘at most’ three minutes,” Beatrice corrected. “Most of the time it’s less than a minute. The Sands of Time are a strange thing; the deeper your understanding of them, the longer they stay. If you can stay for more than three minutes, it means you have completely mastered the Sands of Time. They will no longer leave you, and only you can see and control them.”

Xia Zuo pondered for a moment and asked, "Teacher, can the Sands of Time be exchanged repeatedly? I haven't condensed an inner body yet, will this have a negative impact on my comprehension?"

Beatrice said, “You can’t exchange it repeatedly; each person only has one chance. As for the negative effects you mentioned, you can rest assured. The Temple stipulates that only Temple Mages can exchange it in order to block information about the Sands of Time. Anyone can comprehend it, even ordinary people. There are such examples in the Temple. A Temple Mage exchanged the Sands of Time for his child, and the child comprehended the laws of spacetime. His spiritual ocean immediately expanded to a diameter of about two meters, and he became a formal mage without any hindrance.”

"Are there many people in the temple who have successfully comprehended the laws of spacetime?" Xia Zuo asked, holding up the metal box.

“Very few. As far as I know, there are probably only eight people, all of them Inner Temple mages.” Beatrice walked back to her desk and sat down.

Xia Zuo noticed that the other person's desk was piled high with documents waiting to be processed, indicating that she had a lot of things to deal with.

Xia Zuo thought for a moment and asked the last question:

"Teacher, what will happen if we successfully master the Sands of Time? Do I need to set up a magic circle to prevent the energy from surging?"

“Oh…I almost forgot to mention…” Beatrice picked up her pen with silver sand, then put it down again, pondered for a few seconds, and said:

"There's no need to set up a magic array to contain the energy surge. Mastering the Sands of Time doesn't cause any energy fluctuations. Just in case, and I mean just in case, if you really can master the laws of spacetime, you must report to Christor. We'll verify it when you advance to the rank of Archmage in the future."

“Okay, teacher.” Xia Zuo bowed and thanked him.

He carefully packed up the metal boxes, thanked the other party again for helping him collect the "package," and then left the house.

...

In Anru's professor's dormitory.

Xia Zuo plans to try the Sands of Time first to see if he has the luck to master the laws of time and space.

It feels like opening a high-value blind box.

He placed the metal box on the table, clasped his hands together in a mystical gesture, a prayer that had been used in both his previous and current lives, and muttered several names of gods from his past life, praying earnestly for a moment.

Whether or not time-space magic can be used to investigate past events depends entirely on this lottery draw.

Xia Zuo unlocked the metal box, used his high-level mage emblem to decrypt the magic circle, opened the lid of the metal box, and saw the legendary Sands of Time.

Just as its name suggests, it looks like an insignificant grain of golden sand, lying quietly on the base of a glass hourglass.

When Xia Zuo saw it, the surface of the Sands of Time emitted a faint light, flickering as if it were breathing.

"That's it?" Xia Zuo stared wide-eyed at the Sands of Time before him. "How am I supposed to comprehend this? Am I just supposed to watch it flash by?"

Xia Zuo quickly thought for a moment, then immediately picked up the hourglass, flipped open the base, poured out the sand, and held the Sands of Time in his hand.

The feel of it in your palm is no different from touching ordinary sand.

Xia Zuo activated [Flesh and Blood Control], causing the flesh and blood in his palms to devour the Sands of Time.

The information about the cheat system immediately came to mind.

"The host has been found to contain one Sand of Time. Should we proceed with the forced digestion of the Sand of Time? Unknown changes are predicted."

“Confirmed!” Xia Zuo murmured.

The next second, he felt a burning sensation in his palm. The ordinary sand, which had just been swallowed by flesh and blood, became as hot as a red-hot iron, giving Xia Zuo the illusion that his palm was about to be burned through.

Xia Zuo clenched his right hand tightly, his mind completely calm.

He wasn't bothered by the burning sensation or the pain. The reaction in his palm proved that the method he was using was working. If there were no change at all, it would have worried him.

Xia Zuo brought up the character template and looked at his health data. As expected, he found that his health level was decreasing. The real-time health regeneration rate changed from positive 480 points/hour to negative 3000 points/hour the moment he digested the Sands of Time.

It is not difficult to infer from Beatrice's words that the Sands of Time are a strange thing with an automatic master-choosing function, and the master-choosing process lasts from 0 to 3 minutes.

If Xia Zuo can hold out for 3 minutes, he will have succeeded. This amount of health loss is just a drop in the ocean.

He stood in front of the table, quietly waiting for three minutes to pass, while focusing on the information in his mind.

The room fell silent for a moment, before being broken by a soft gasp from Xia Zuo.

"Holy crap..." Xia Zuo read the information in his mind in shock, and instantly understood what the laws of spacetime were.

What appears to be a tiny grain of sand of time is actually a key tool in the laws of spacetime.

After gaining its approval, Xia Zuo successfully obtained all the knowledge about the laws of spacetime from it.

Specifically, it is like this:

First, it's important to understand that the definition of time is not the wall clock, the corner clock, the wristwatch, or the pocket watch. All kinds of clocks simply use mechanical structures to depict the human imagination of time.

The parameters, such as how many angles the pointer rotates every second, are defined manually.

If civilizations have different structures and different standards of measurement, the definition of "one second" will differ. As a result, people in different regions will have different understandings and ways of measuring time.

Is there a theorem that is like a truth, which can unify the time standard of the entire planet, or even the entire universe?

some.

It is the Sands of Time.

The sands of time are the carriers of time, witnesses and recorders of time.

If a grain of sand of time passes through an object once, that object experiences one-thousandth of a second.

One second passes through an object if 1000 grains of sand each pass through it once, or if the same grain of sand passes through an object 1000 times consecutively, or if an object is passed through by an indefinite number of grains of sand 1000 times.

If you want to manipulate time and speed up its flow, simply let more Sands of Time pass through the target object.

Conversely, if you want to slow down the flow of time, reduce the amount of Sands of Time passing through.

Xia Zuo currently possesses the Sands of Time, which has three main uses.

First, he has a new skill on his character panel called [Time Vision], which allows him to see all the Sands of Time.

After activating this skill, Xia Zuo stared blankly around. Countless sands of time were swirling wildly in the surrounding space, as if he were in a raging sandstorm vortex.

Xia Zuo looked down at his body, took out his pocket watch, and silently counted how many grains of sand passed through his body in the human-defined "1 second" by observing the changes in the second hand.

The second hand slid one tick, and one second as defined by humans passed by. During this time, approximately 1000 grains of sand of time did indeed pass through his body.

Looking at the desk, chandelier, blinds, and other furniture, the chaotic and haphazardly scattered sands of time, under the control of an invisible and immense force, maintain a frequency of passing through the object 1000 times per second.

This indicates that within the space where Xia Zuo is currently located, the flow of time in any corner is uniform, and there is no abnormality in the flow of time.

Chapter 14 Spacetime Encoding

My health is recovering incredibly fast.

The second benefit of mastering the Sands of Time is that it can accelerate the flow of time to a limited extent.

Xia Zuo can manipulate his Sands of Time to pass through an object and accelerate the flow of time within that object.

There is an important term in the laws of spacetime: "spacetime coding".

The writing format for a single spatiotemporal code is:

【24位空间地址+18位物体基准时间+12位物体法术编码+6位时之沙代码】，合计一共60位。

This long string of spacetime codes was mostly written in a language that Xia Zuo had never learned. Apart from a small portion of the spell codes for objects that he could understand, the rest was completely incomprehensible.

but!

It's okay if you don't understand it.